Why did this tank have trouble holding hate?

Please help me out.

I'll preface this by saying I know almost nothing about being a tank, which is why I am asking here rather than assuming.

I was in a level 60 dungeon (forgot the name) with a DRK tank. The tank opened up with the skill the makes stuff shoot out of the ground. (Don't know the name, sorry).

After this, I would cast Divine Seal --> Regen as I usually do.
But one or two of the mobs would immediately run at me half the time. (Yes, I made sure to only cast Regen after the tank gained hate.)
Unfortunately, the tank did little to try to pick these up at first.
But after a few times, the tank noticed I was getting pummeled and tried to pick them up, but I still was generating a ton of hate.

I had to stop DPSing and and just stand there at points so the tank could gain more hate.

After mobs escaping the tank several times, the tank tried using that skill 2 or even three times per encounter, and still throughout the encounter a mob or two would come at me, and sometimes another DPS.

This has never happened to me before so frequently in a dungeon, especially at level 60.
I wanted to understand why this was happening so next time I could maybe try to give the DRK some advice. (Don't know if it's a good idea, as I have no experience, but it might be better than repeating the same thing over and over.)

I didn't check their equipment, but the tank was losing health very fast, so it was tough switching between healing and DPS to keep them up. Could this have been an equipment issue? Or a skill issue?
Or was this somehow my fault? If so, what should I have done differently?

Maybe his gear was broken. Or he was just on a way lower ilvl than you.
If the latter is the case, cut your tank some slack. No overheal at all and no going full holy spam on him before he has a solid grasp on all of the mobs.

If none of the 2 mentioned scenarios applied, it's his fault for not checking if he still has enough aggro on all the mobs and not spamming more aoes if he is about to lose hate.

I'm assuming the ability you are referring to is "Unleash" which is the DRK's version of Flash. So that's fine.

From what you've said it seems that he was either:
A. Not dealing enough damage (low level weapon)
B. Not using a proper rotation
C. A lower ilvl

I'm not expert on tanking, and even less so when it comes to DRK specifically, but there's no reason you should have pulled hate with just a Regen if the tank is even half decent. He should have used Unleash more often for sure though. Unleash provides enmity in an AoE so... Yeah.

The causes should be:
A/ lower Ilv than yours including weapon.
B/ Grit (the blue icon with a guy holding his hand up saying hi to the red line) is not up. You can see this on the status bar.
C/ their gear is broken or a piece is missing.
These are the main reasons for DRK not holding aggro. (~°-°)~

Thank you to all who have replied so far.
I did check if Grit was up, and it was. Which had me worried about why he was losing HP so quickly.

I was thinking that maybe he had a lower item level than me. It seemed like the three people I was grouped with all came in together, and it as the first time for one of them (DPS) who had very little HP. It could have been that they hadn't been 60 for long.

Because he was DRK, I waited to use Holy until their ability that regenerates their MP ran out or was right about to run out. (Forget the name of this ability.)
Until then I did Regen on tank --> Switch to tank's target --> Aero II --> Aero I --> Stone III. By that time the DRKs ability has usually just about run out. Then I use Holy if the tank still has more than 50% HP. If not CS off --> Cure I or Cure II --> CS on --> Holy

The problem was the mobs the tank was not attacking were either coming after me or DPS.

I should have checked their gear. If it is a gear problem, I guess there is little one can do during the dungeon to repair it. I will have to find a careful balance between healing / DPSing / hate.

DS Regen shouldn't pull that much threat. It's possible that the Unleash just missed a few mobs and they bolted toward you. Sometimes this happens depending on how far spread out mobs are, if they need to be moved, or if new ones spawn during the pull. If it was a case of gear, I'd imagine all the mobs would bolt for you and not just a few.

If the case is that he lost aggro during the pull to mobs being AOE'd, he simply wasn't AOEing enough. There's no feasible reason not to just spam Abyssal Drain or Unleashed when Blood Price is going.

Anyway, it sounds like this was a one off situation, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Agreed, if it's not gear then it's the DRK rotation, unleash twice and abyssal drain is enough to hold aggro off the pack of mobs. When I re-read the post again, my bet is on gear. If the hp of a tank drop very fast with 3 mobs, the tank's gear is broken ( assuming there's no piece and missing same ilv as yours). I'm not too worry about the left side of the gear since at lv 60 there's no more Disciple of War gear set, but check the accessories wheather they are Fending accessories or not.

Undergeared most likely. If their HP just drops like a rock you should check their shit and proceed to moan and groan.

Personally, I would narrow this down to gear and a bit of rotation. Addressing the HP dropping like a rock thing, that can happen depending mobs, it can also amount to not using cooldowns to help mitigate damage. Dark Arts + Dark Passenger blinds mobs in a row in front of the user, Dark Dance increases evasion...there's options. I hope the DRK was utilizing these. Being under geared is also a thing in the lv60 dungeons since there is a large ilv difference.

Rotation...the DRK needs to use Unleash more, Holy does generate a lot of hate (and awesome damage + stun) but Regen doesn't pull that much even with Divine Seal.

I think you realized this already, but it's not you. When you encounter tanks that might have trouble with hate and damage like this, just sit back and ease on the DPS'ing a bit. :)

If you pulled hate as quickly as you suggest, and they were as squishy as you suggest, it tells me that (1) they were undergeared, specifically in terms of their sword, and (2) they didn't have Grit on. Even without Grit, I've found that a single Unleash from a tank with decent gear will hold hate through at least 2-3 ticks of Regen. The same goes for an undergeared tank using Grit: a single Unleash will hold hate for a good bit longer than one tick of Regen, thanks to the relatively huge enmity modifier it has. No Grit and poor weapon? That will cause a one-tick hate-grab.

You can rest easy, though, OP: you did nothing wrong, and just happened to get paired with someone who didn't know what they were doing.

EDIT: Just saw the bit about Grit being on. The only other thing I can think is if the tank wasn't using Darkside, which is a flat boost to DPS output (and thus enmity generation). Darkside also unlocks a bunch of cooldown abilities, and gives DRKs access to Dark Arts, which will help them out substantially in their ability to both do damage and their ability to mitigate. I suspect this might be the case; one of my FC healers encountered a premade group in Sohm Al a few weeks back, and the Dark Knight was extremely squishy, wasn't using Darkside, and couldn't hold hate for crap (if you got the same group, I sincerely apologize, because it turns out they're somewhat known on our server for trolling DF healers).

As most have noted, it was likely the DRK was just really undergeared. While leveling I've forgotten to upgrade gear after a couple dungeons and the difference in holding hate is astonishing.

Also, if they pulled as soon as you hit Regen then there is a chance the DRK missed some with his Unleash. Otherwise, with Grit on even one Unleash would be enough to keep hate for a few more spells. If you were pulling hate after that then it is likely the tank wasn't rotating targets with his enmity combo or using Unleash enough, while being undergeared.

Doesn't sound like anything you did wrong.

This was worth reading just for your descriptions of what happened lol. I relate, because it's similar to how I describe pretty much every healer besides Whm.

On topic, like most people said, the Tank was probably under-geared. More than ANY OTHER JOB IN THE GAME, Tanks need to keep their gear up to date to function properly in their role. Even if they were just lacking a sufficient weapon, they quickly start to fall behind. That said, you provided another hint in your second post:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FinaSel

The problem was the mobs the tank was not attacking were either coming after me or DPS.

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This tells me that the tank was probably inexperienced at playing Drk. Firstly, enmity generation is not a one and done equation. Unleash (I'm assuming, based on your description) is great for grabbing snap aggro, but that does not mean that the Drk can actively ignore their off-targets. It's usually best for them to be swapping targets regularly in order to maintain their lead on enmity. Out of all the tanks, Drk's have the most to juggle when doing this, because they have a ton of oGCD's to manage on top of their Mp draw. That means that a lot of Drk's actively ignore their enmity combo in favour of using Soul Eater to siphon more Mp. When they're geared at max level, they can make some sacrifices and still hold hate, but when they're still lower in the ranks, they will most certainly have trouble keeping up.

Secondly, you made an comment about them being hard to heal. That's a another hint right there that they might not be that comfortable with Drk yet. A LOT of people make the false assumption that Drk's are generally squishier than Pld's and War's, but that's not true. If we're being honest, the real issue is usually that the tank is inexperienced at using Drk's more complicated rotation while keeping up a steady defense. Again, this typically falls down to the fact that they have a crap ton of oGCD's to watch while maintaining their Mp. If they started losing aggro, then that's all the more distraction for them to not be using their buffs accordingly. It's something that you can easily see in inexperienced Drks, because literally every tank falls into this problem at least for a little while when they first take up that job.

It's hard to say for certain without knowing exactly what kind of rotation the Drk was running, but it sounds to me like they were not using their skills efficiently enough to cover up for a generally lower item level.

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